Cola Wars Revisited: Coke and Pepsi Duel Over Bottles Made from Plants

The fight’s no longer about what you’re drinking, it’s about what you’re drinking from.

It’s got the look and feel of plastic, but Pepsi’s new bottles won’t be as harsh on the environment as typical plastic. That’s because the containers will be made entirely from plant material. And the ingredient list reads like a tree-hugger’s smoothie: switch grass, pine bark and corn husks.

Slashfood reports Americans use an estimated 200,000 barrels of oil each day in producing plastic packaging for our goods, including soda bottles. Pepsi’s new bottles, made 100 percent from plants, will emulate the look and feel of the bottles we’re all used to – the ones made from oil-guzzling, environment-killing PET plastic.

The bottle will enter production in 2012, in direct response to Coke’s 2009 endeavor to make a bottle with 30 percent plant matter.

Eventually, Pepsi hopes to up their menu of plant matter that goes into the packaging. They plan to add orange and potato peels, oat hulls, and other byproducts (compost?) from the food production businesses under their umbrella. But please, eco-friendly folks, don’t try to eat the bottle.